Effective Living for Better Coding: From Retail to Software Engineering with Scrimba Student Cassie

🎙 About the episode

Meet Cassie Lewis 🇺🇸! Cassie has a fine arts degree, which turned out to be too fancy for the real world. After working in different fields, from photography to retail, she got interested in coding - and it turned out to be just the right fit with how her mind works! Cassie is fueled by curiosity, creativity, and challenges. And learning to code alongside a day job was certainly a challenge.

Two years into her learning path, Cassie realized she had hit a wall. In an attempt to get unstuck, she joined the Scrimba bootcamp. She also challenged herself to read more non-fiction and embarked on a path toward effective living. In this episode, Cassie explains effective living and how it can make you a more effective coder, too! You'll hear how Cassie defeated burnout, how she approached learning, and how she - only nine months after joining the bootcamp - landed her first dev job. This is a story about setting goals, establishing systems, frictionless networking (even if you don't live in a tech hub), and keeping your plans realistic. But also: this is also a story of creativity and exploration!

🔗 Connect with Cassie

• 🧑‍💼 Linkedin
• 🌐 Website

⏰ Timestamps

• How Cassie went from a fine arts degree to retail to coding (01:24)
• How Cassie chose her careers and roles and basically created her last retail position (03:35)
• Cassie originally discovered coding through WordPress (05:11)
• Is coding similar to making art? (05:47)
• Learning to code was a gradual shift (06:53)
• Why you should maintain some balance while learning to code (08:39)
• How Cassie managed her self-confidence (10:03)
• Community break with Jan the Producer (10:59)
• Resources Cassie used to help with her mindset during her coding journey (13:39)
• What is effective living (15:39)
• What did Cassie do to put herself back on track when she slipped? (19:32)
• Cassie's systems (21:13)
• Identify the key pillars in your life (23:07)
• How Cassie landed her first developer job (26:50)
• You never know who can help you (28:07)
• How's Cassie's new job going after three months? (34:15)
• Getting paid to learn on the job (35:54)

🧰 Resources Mentioned

• Scrimba Bootcamp
• How Johnny Learned Angular and Typescript in Three Days
• Cooking Up a Career Change: Overcoming Burnout and Finding Your Why, with Scrimba Student Jimmy
• Essentialism
• Atomic Habits

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